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OSS licences vs. ToS: moral rights #8

@mirabilos

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@mirabilos

Even after #1 there are still some remaining issues. This one is about §D.7 (moral rights).

I fear I must state that the presence of this section still excludes all OSS licences requiring attribution if the work comes from a nōn-GitHub source who is also someone other than the person uploading it to GitHub.

Licences such as CC-BY, but also (at least 4-clause) BSD and (with a much wider impact) Apache 2 licence with a NOTICE file, require retaining attribution.

As I stated in February, I believe this is the “cheap way out” of something that can be solved with some very minor technical effort. Please let me elaborate:

You stated (in the pre-pull#1 ToS) that this is necessary for search functionality. Such functionality can either be done by others (crawling GitHub and presenting the results), in which case you’re not responsible as long as the changes from #7 are applied and those others are required to fulfil those licences themselves, or by GitHub.

I believe that it is customary to display search results with a link to the original in its context. I believe it would be enough to fulfil those licences’ attribution requirements if you put a notice on each search result page/snippet stating that these are excerpts for search, which are not in the Public Domain but are covered by copyright and neighbouring laws, and the terms under which those are available can be found if one follows the link to the original in its context.

In the USA, you may even get by with citing “fair use”.


One thing I noticed in the post-pull#1 wording is that it only applies to “Your Content”, which is defined as content that the person uploading it to GitHub creates or owns. Is this deliberate?

If yes, and this is made explicit (either by commenting here or by adjusting the wording), I believe this clause can stay as-is but will not help you as people can still upload content created by others under licences requiring attribution without those others needing to waive that assertion right. (Unfairness to those who do publish to GitHub aside, then.)

So, in the end, I believe it’s better if §D.7 is removed in its entirety and small technical measures to ensure it’s not necessary are invented.

I could also live with §D.7 being amended to make it trigger only for work not under one of the OSS licences I pointed out in #7


This is a follow-up on a part of the new ToS draft, partly from my prior review which I assume you know, but, if not, suggest to read. The list of free licences on my website is new, created after that article.

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